Siege of Nagashima

The Siege of Nagashima occurred in 1574 during the Sengoku period. Nobunaga Oda brought all his forces to bear against the Ikko-Ikki stronghold of Nagashima (located on the Pacific coast of Owari Province in Japan), which he had set aflame. As a result, the entire garrison of 20,000 soldiers and thousands more civilians died in the blaze, which effectively annihilated the Ikko-Ikki threat.

Background
The Ikko-Ikki sect of Buddhism became very powerful during the Sengoku period, taking advantage of the feuds between the country's warlords to overrun several provinces. By the 1570s, they had become so powerful that the fearsome warlord Nobunaga Oda became their enemy. Nobunaga, the lord of Owari Province, set out to besiege the Ikko-Ikki stronghold at Nagashima along the Pacific coast of Japan, and sieges in 1571 and 1573 were unsuccessful.

Siege
Stung by his previous failures to capture the stronghold, he brought all his forces to bear against the Ikko-Ikki in 1574. A fleet of ships under Yoshitaka Kuki used cannon and fire arrows against the Ikko-Ikki's wooden watchtowers, and the naval support allowed for Nobunaga to seize the outer forts of Nakae and Yanagashima, controlling the west side of Nagashima. Strong winds led to the fire from the arrows engulfing the fortress, and the Ikko-Ikki rushed to escape the stronghold. Some units were trapped by the fire and condemned to burn to death, while others charged out of the stronghold and into battle with the numerically superior Oda forces. The entire fortress complex was set aflame, and no one escaped or survived, killing over 20,000 soldiers, women, and children. The destruction of the Nagashima complex also signalled the downfall of the sect, which would be destroyed when Kennyo Hongan-ji surrendered the main Ikko-Ikki stronghold of Ishiyama Hongan-ji to Nobunaga in August 1580.